21 February, 2016

This Week In Videogames – 21/02/2016

By
Kyle Shimmin

Hmm do you smell that? It’s the scent of post-release
support; to some it spells the beginning of the end for the industry, the foul reek
of capitalism. To most though the smell is inoffensive and is either easily
ignored, or else offers a reason to play more of a particular videogame. DLC ‘s
most certainly the theme of this week’s news roundup!

Zeni To The Max

This week Bethesda took the fore, we’ll start off light. On
Twitter, the official Doom account estimated their upcoming single player
campaign to run around “13+” hours, at least so far as the studio can from internal tests,
varying of course depending upon the difficulty selected.

.@Unreal389 The difficulty level plays a factor, but folks playing at the office average 13+ hours in the campaign

I’m not at all suggesting volume equates to value – hour
count isn’t a metric that usually concerns me, as evidenced my review of StarWars: Battlefront – but for comparison; the original Doom averaged around 4-5
hours, Doom 2 7-9, and Doom 3 11-13, link below.

Fallout 4’s season pass got outlined and rejigged; three add-ons
originally comprised the entirety of the pass’ content. However, due to the
success of the game, the season pass has been expanded and so too will it’s
price, here are the first three releases.

Automatron will release in March for $9.99/£7.99:

“The mysterious Mechanist has unleashed a horde of evil
robots into the Commonwealth, including the devious Robobrain. Hunt them down
and harvest their parts to build and mod your own custom robot companions.
Choose from hundreds of mods; mixing limbs, armor, abilities, and weapons like
the all-new lightning chain gun. Even customize their paint schemes and choose
their voices!”

Wasteland Workshop in April for $4.99/£3.99:

“With the Wasteland Workshop, design and set cages to
capture live creatures – from raiders to Deathclaws! Tame them or have them
face off in battle, even against your fellow settlers. The Wasteland Workshop
also includes a suite of new design options for your settlements like nixie
tube lighting, letter kits, taxidermy and more!”

And Far Harbor, the only truly sizable expansion of playable
content of the three, will hit in May for $24.99/£19.99:

“A new case from Valentine’s Detective Agency leads you on a
search for a young woman and a secret colony of synths. Travel off the coast of
Maine to the mysterious island of Far Harbor, where higher levels of radiation
have created a more feral world. Navigate through the growing conflict between
the synths, the Children of Atom, and the local townspeople. Will you work
towards bringing peace to Far Harbor, and at what cost? Far Harbor features the
largest landmass for an add-on that we’ve ever created, filled with new faction
quests, settlements, lethal creatures and dungeons. Become more powerful with
new, higher-level armor and weapons. The choices are all yours.”

This is just the first run of content, as I said at the top,
this is what was planned for the £24.99 season pass, however Bethesda has
promised more “adventures and features throughout 2016, amounting to over $60
in value”. As such the season pass will increase from $29.99/£24.99 to
$49.99/£39.99 as of March 1st. So if you enjoyed Fallout 4 and know you want
more, maybe make the most of this lower price, this is probably as cheap as it
will be for the next year or so.

Closed betas will be conducted for the DLCs on both consoles
and PC, with sign-ups being taken already, link below. There will also be free
updates and improvements, with a Survival Mode currently in the works;
overhauling the systems this mode will force players to consider their health
more closely and manage food, sleep, and more. In addition to the Creation Kit,
mod tools.

Bethesda studio director Todd Howard spoke at this week’s
DICE summit, at which Fallout 4 was named game of the year. During which he
announced that in addition to the aforementioned Fallout 4 DLC, the studio was
also working on “three longer-term projects”, describing them only as,
"different than anything we’ve done before, while also being a
Bethesda-style game—kind of big and crazy—but in many ways different than
things we’ve done before."

Filling The Void

As we covered last week, the Assassin’s Creed release
schedule has gotten a bit of a shake-up this year, with smaller titles filling
the gap left in the absence of a big annual release. These will be bolstered by
a young adult book series called, Last Descendants.

Last Descendants is written by Matthew J. Kirby, known for the
book Icefall, and is set to release in September, with a sequel landing in
January 2017. The book will follow a group of teenagers as they jump through
DNA-based history into 1860s New York and the Aztec lands during the Spanish
invasion. The figures William "Boss" Tweet, Hernan Cortes, and
Adelina Patti are all set to appear in typical Assassin’s Creed fashion.

And You Though Punching A Missile Was Dumb

Just Cause 3 is a crazy game, not as off the wall as Saints
Row The Third, or 4 is grant you, or quite as… Japanese as some of Swery’s
works, but nonetheless crazy, both in its action and in its writing. And it’s
about to up the ante with the ‘Air, Land, & Sea Expansion Pass’ that is set
to add three pieces of content to Just Cause 3, the first being the Sky
Fortress shown in the trailer below.

Note the swarm of drones and rocket-powered wingsuit.

Second is the ‘Land Mech Assault’ DLC that will add
missions surrounding a new highly manoeuvrable mech outfitted with a gravity
gun. There is no information on the final ‘Baravrium Sea Heist’ DLC, save its
watery nature. The pass will cost $24.99/£19.99, with the Sky Fortress
available from March, costing $11.99/£9.49 on its own.

Total Administration

In a pleasantly transparent forum post, Creative Assembly
revealed the inner structure of their studio and the projects they currently
have in the works. There are five teams of varying size working on the Total
War franchise; one team headed by game director Gabor Beressy is busy on Total
War: ARENA, the “free-to-play massed battle strategy game”, which is currently
in closed beta. Renaud Charpentier is leading the Total War Battles: KINGDOM
team, which is in open beta on Steam in some regions, it’s also free-to-play
though will be cross-platform on mobile devices and PC/Mac. The ‘core’
historical team, who last developed Total War: Attila, are currently
prototyping features for the next ‘huge’ historical Total War title, though its
announcement is a while off.

Working in support of the historical team, and soon
transitioning onto the Warhammer team, is the ‘New Content Team’, headed by
Jack Lusted. This team builds both the smaller culture packs, like the upcoming
Slavic Nations, as well as the larger expansions like Charlemagne and
presumably The Last Roman. In the immediate spotlight is the Warhammer team,
helmed by Ian Roxburgh, Total War: Warhammer has been in production since 2012
and is set to release April 28th this year.

Additionally, there’s the team responsible for Alien:
Isolation who are now busy on Halo Wars 2, though no further information was
given.

There’s a good chance it could amount to nothing, however
with regards to Dragon Age Inquisition, Bioware were remarkably forthright
during development, discussing systems and ideas with fans at events such as
the PAX’s years before release. I truly did love my time with Dragon Age Inquisition,
and frequently think of returning to it, but a smaller, more intimate slice of
that universe sounds delectable, even knowing where the Trespasser expansion
left the story.

Also on Twitter and concerning Bioware, Mass Effect
Andromeda lead writer Chris Schlerf announced his departure from the Montreal
studio, describing it as:

Sincerely one of the best experiences of my career-I'm incredibly grateful to have worked w/ such talented & truly wonderful human beings.

And that he believed Andromeda would “blow people away,” it’s slated to release in this coming fiscal year, so by the end of March 2017. Schlerf is moving to Bungie, where he’ll take up the reins as lead writer of whatever the hell Destiny will become. Previously he was lead writer on Halo 4.

All that said, very happy to be back in Seattle, working with this scrappy little company called Bungie that some of you may have heard of.